Elias knew something was coming the moment the guards arrived at dawn.
Not the usual two-man detail. Four of them this time, helmets sealed, rifles bristling with containment lances—the kind of weapons reserved for high-threat transports or active containment breaches. Their presence alone made his stomach tighten. Something was shifting, and he didn't like the smell of it.
"On your feet, Kael," one ordered, the voice clipped and emotionless behind the armored visor.
Elias swung his legs off the cot slowly, eyes narrowing. "Where are we going?"
The guard's visor glinted in the rising sun. "Orders are classified."
"That's not an answer," Elias shot back, voice light, tinged with sarcasm, though he could feel the adrenaline sharpening his senses.
Another guard leaned in, stance rigid, the rifle's tip tracing an invisible arc in the air. "Doesn't need to be."
They moved him through the facility in silence. The corridors were empty—morning shift hadn't started yet. Holt had orchestrated this transfer long before anyone else even arrived. Elias counted turns, memorizing the checkpoints they bypassed. No labs. No command center. The route was taking him somewhere else entirely.
The hangar.
The massive bay doors came into view, rising like stone jaws to reveal the frozen expanse beyond. A transport carrier idled on the landing pad, engines humming low. No insignia. No markings. Just blank, black steel.
A black site bird.
Elias smirked faintly. So it begins.
At the base of the ramp, Holt waited. Coat buttoned tight to the throat, his posture rigid, expression carved from stone.
"Commander," Elias drawled, letting the sarcasm drip, "going on a field trip?"
Holt's gaze was colder than the wind slicing across the tundra. "This facility is no longer secure with you inside it. You're being transferred."
Elias arched an eyebrow. "Transferred to where?"
"To a place where you can't disrupt my command. Or anyone else's."
"Meaning?" Elias prompted. "A grave?"
Holt didn't flinch. "If that's what containment requires, yes."
The soldiers tensed as Elias chuckled, low and humorless, the sound echoing off steel walls.
"Funny thing about cages, Holt," Elias said, his voice dropping to a dangerous calm. "The more you tighten them, the more the cracks show."
Before Holt could retort, a new sound shredded the cold dawn: a deep, bone-rattling hum.
Every head turned instinctively toward the bay doors.
The air shimmered, frost splitting like cracked glass under invisible pressure. Light bent wrong, refracted in unnatural hues.
A Rift.
It was forming fast.
Alarms erupted, red lights slicing across the hangar ceiling. Technicians shouted, sprinting for cover as consoles flashed warnings. Holt barked orders over the comms. "Grid teams! Deploy containment pattern six! Move!"
But Elias barely heard him. The Core inside him had awakened fully, a blazing pulse of energy syncing perfectly with the Rift's chaotic heartbeat. It wasn't distant. It wasn't random. It was calling to him.
The Rift widened, a jagged tear in reality itself, stretching across the tundra like a wound in the world. Dark, twisting light bled through, washing the snow in colors that didn't exist in any spectrum Elias had ever cataloged.
The soldiers froze, torn between their orders and the surreal threat before them.
"Load him onto the carrier!" Holt snapped.
A soldier hesitated. "Sir, the anomaly—"
"I said load him! Now!"
The hesitation was brief. Elias's grin widened, cold and knowing. Even your men don't believe you anymore.
The Rift's first tendril lashed outward, slicing through a nearby support tower as though it were tissue paper. Sparks flew in every direction, ice spraying into the air. The hangar trembled. Engines sputtered, whining under the interference.
"Commander! You can't risk a transfer during this event—it'll destabilize both the Rift and the ship!" Lyra's voice cut in over the comm, sharp with panic.
"Silence!" Holt roared, though his words rang hollow beneath the growing roar of tearing reality.
Elias took a measured step forward, the Core's heat coursing through him, muscles straining with the raw resonance. His voice, calm and razor-sharp, sliced through the tension.
"You can't fight it, Holt. You can't cage it. The only reason you're still breathing is because I'm here. In this facility."
He lifted his hands, letting the Core flare. Threads of light wrapped around his arms, latching onto the Rift's anchors like magnetic tendrils. Every pulse sent a shiver through the frozen ground.
"You don't understand what you're trying to control," Elias said, almost softly. "That thing doesn't obey your orders—but it listens to me."
The soldiers' eyes flickered. Doubt. Confusion. Fear. Holt saw it too—the fragile thread of loyalty breaking under the weight of undeniable truth.
"Stand down!" Holt shouted. "He's manipulating you!"
No one moved.
A second tendril whipped across the pad, tearing through the hangar doors with a screech of bending metal. Snow and shards of steel blasted inward. The Rift was expanding faster than projected.
Elias spread his arms, letting the Core sing through him, resonance building into a crescendo that made the air itself vibrate. The snow whipped across his face, stinging, but he didn't flinch. He focused entirely on the Rift.
"Let me out there. Or we all die here," he said, voice carrying across the chaos.
Lyra's tone cracked with urgency. "Commander, he's right—this resonance is accelerating faster than projected. If he doesn't intervene—"
"Enough!" Holt barked, though his voice seemed swallowed by the Rift's roar.
Elias stepped closer, closer to the edge of the landing pad, closer to the pulsing, chaotic wound in reality. His voice softened, intimate now, a quiet insistence.
"You can kill me after, Holt. If that's what you want. But right now? I'm the only one who can close that."
Time stretched. The Core thrummed in his chest like a living heartbeat. The Rift's glow painted Holt's face in unnatural, shifting colors, exposing the desperation lurking behind the commander's disciplined mask.
Finally, Holt's hand slashed through the air. "Fine. One chance. You fail—you don't leave this pad alive."
Elias's lips curved in a faint, almost imperceptible smile. "Deal."
The soldiers parted instinctively, giving him the path he needed. Snow stung his eyes, wind whipped around him, but he didn't falter. Each step was measured, deliberate, resonating with the Core's pulsing energy.
As he approached the Rift, reality seemed to bend around him. The air shimmered, fracturing like light through water. Every heartbeat in the hangar thumped in sync with his own. He raised his hands.
The Core surged, threads of light latching onto the Rift's anchors. Elias could feel it resisting, pulling against him, twisting space around his arms like molten steel. He gritted his teeth, pouring every ounce of energy into stabilizing the anomaly.
Snow, ice, and shards of metal lifted into a spiraling vortex as the Core's resonance met the Rift's chaotic pulse. The ground cracked underfoot, light bending and folding back on itself. The very air vibrated with impossible frequencies, humming through the bones of everyone present.
Holt stumbled, stepping backward, shielded by nothing but disbelief. Lyra's voice was the only tether of reason in the maelstrom. "Elias! Don't let it reach critical phase! Anchor it!"
Elias's eyes flicked to the Rift. Its edges tore at reality, threads reaching for infinity. He focused the Core's power, pulling, weaving, anchoring. The threads screamed, lightning arcing along their lengths, snow and ice exploding outward.
The ground shook violently. The hangar groaned. Sparks erupted as energy fused with metal. Even the black transport carrier shuddered, engines straining under the strange, resonant interference.
Through it all, Elias maintained focus. He could feel the Rift reacting to him, almost sentient. It pulled at his mind, probed his fears, tested his limits. He drew upon the Core, feeding it with willpower, memory, and every ounce of knowledge he had gleaned over the past months.
Time stretched. Seconds felt like minutes. The Core's pulse became a rhythm, a song in a language older than humanity. Elias felt the weight of every life tethered to this moment, the fragile thread of civilization hanging on his strength alone.
And then, slowly, imperceptibly at first, the Rift began to stabilize. Its jagged edges folded inward, light dimming, the unnatural colors bleeding back into the natural spectrum. The tendrils retracted, snapping like frayed wires being rewound.
The storm subsided. Snow fell gently now, no longer whipping across the pad. The hangar stood, battered but intact. The Core's glow receded, leaving a warm, steady pulse in Elias's chest.
Holt, pale and silent, finally spoke. "How… how did you—?"
Elias didn't answer immediately. He let the Core's warmth spread, steadying his own pulse, before letting his gaze settle on the commander. "You've been trying to control things that don't obey orders," he said softly. "Remember that."
The soldiers, still trembling, lowered their rifles, eyes wide with the realization of the power they had just witnessed. Holt's expression shifted slightly, a flicker of acknowledgment breaking through the ice around his heart.
"You… can't be caged," Holt admitted quietly, almost to himself.
Elias gave a faint nod. "No. Not even for you."
The wind swept across the frozen pad, carrying with it the scent of ozone, frost, and the faint tang of Rift energy. Elias turned away from the stabilized anomaly, back toward the waiting black site carrier. Holt said nothing, merely watching as the junior engineer walked past him—no longer a prisoner, but the undeniable master of the moment.
And as the engines of the transport carrier began to hum again, Elias allowed himself a brief, grim smile. The Core pulsed steadily now, calm and contained—for the moment. But he knew, with absolute certainty, this was only the beginning.
The Rift had called to him once. It would call again. And next time, the stakes would be higher.
Elias Kael was ready.